**Editor's Note: This piece was written in response to a question asking panelists to choose the best of six proposals on how to move forward on climate change. Read More Panelist Views**

The Kyoto Protocol and the recent Bali Summit clearly show that a global approach is fraught with political agendas, principally on the part of the United States, that make an effective climate control agreement the product of compromises. Unless the United States, Japan and India join in a concerted bid to agree to emission targets, any agreement will be a show of political intent rather than a commitment to action. Thus the idea of creating climate clubs becomes all the more feasible as it will allow nations who wish to act on climate change to proceed forward, hopefully creating a framework of progress, that will then become the basis of political and social pressure on countries who do not follow the path towards climate change.

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Food riots are not only the language of the unheard but today also the language of the hungry. It is not only that human footprint has far outgrown the resource footprint needed to sustain it, but more importantly that the resource footprint of sustainable food supplies has shrunk. In the case of Africa, alone it is estimated that by 2025 the continent’s available food resources will sustain only 25% of the population. More than 40% degradation of arable land has taken place over the past few decades, during which a combination of droughts, soil contamination and mismanagement has led to a structural crisis separate from the food crisis. Lately, some people are suggesting that alternate bio-fuel production is also competing for grains as a source of supply in the age of rocketing oil prices. Together, all these factors pushed wheat prices up 58% and soybean prices up 32% in the past year alone.

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